AQA Sociology Unit 1 17/05 & Unit 2 23/05 - Official Thread 2016

I know the feeling!! And if i even pass all of them i'll be lucky! Guess im not doing the course in uni ive always wanted to 😂

Do you mind mind maps? I have a mind map of social policy I could upload.

Please, I dont even know whats in the topic of social policies

Luckily none of mine count towards my actual A levels... do any of yours?

Yep my history and biology do 😭
Does anyone know on a ucas form do we put our actual AS grades or predicted ones or both?

Oh thats a shame. Guessing you arent OCR for History then? I was told it was just our predicated grade. But say you do 4 for example, the one you drop will go on your UCAS form.

No i do ccea 😏 Aw I'll be so happy if its just predicted grades! Yeah i do four and im dropping french 100% but not much point putting it on the form its a guaranteed fail

I think you have too

Assess the view that an ageing population creates problems for society. How would you answer this?!!!

Well perhaps start out in the intro by talking about trends that are causing an ageing population. (Increasing life expectancy, declining IMR, declining fertility therefore fewer young people being born compared to amount of elders etc)

Paragraph 1: Then I would go for the feminist perspective. This para would mention the fact that an ageing population would mean that the children of the elders are more likely to take them in to care for them, this burden is often placed upon the woman. Etc.

Paragraph 2: Then I would contrast and argue that having grandparents at home can be a great contribution to the family (can assist with childcare, emotional and financial costs)

Paragraph 3: My next para would be about the effects on the dependency ratio. This is due to more money needing to be spent and poured into the ageing population (goods and services) which will come out of the working class' pocket. You could argue from a Marxist perspective here as a burden would be placed on the working population.

Paragraph 4: I would reiterate about public services but explain that because more money would be thrown into things like the NHS for the elderly, some may argue that this is a waste because, well, they're old and money could be spent elsewhere. Feminists may argue that more money should be spent on centres and facilities for women suffering from domestic abuse or rape etc.


You could also add about New Right thinkers getting up in arms because less younger people are being born and there's more older people. Therefore the nuclear family is being undermined and replaced by an extended family.

Mention statistics to fill out your answers more and just wrap it up in a conclusion! Hope this helps x

Thats really helpful but what would you use to evaluate and critise these? like in education the question was on external factors so you would counter that with internal factors?x

I mean, I don't think that there are "internal and external factors" to apply to the family in the same way as it happens in education - I think you evaluate by proposing two sides and using analysis. Like for example, the first paragraph was supporting the statement that an ageing population can harm society but then the next one was arguing the other side. Use statistics such as "in an RIAS study (2012), it was discovered that Grandparenting was responsible for saving nearly 11 billion pounds on childcare costs over a year".

You could use a post modernist perspective because they're all about family diversity and sociology of the personal life perspectives if you wanted more to contrast with the other side of the argument.

Yeah it was just an example! Thanks thats really helpful Do you have any predictions?

Ohhhh okay! ☺️ And honestly no, I have this fear that if I rolled with the predictions then it would end so badly! I think my teacher is probably keen on demography and sociology of the personal life - I definitely heard her mention the latter.... Personally, I'm praying for childhood to come up but apparently it came up last year!I feel like, because the paper for education wasn't horrendous (I mean except the 10 marker what a joke lmao), I have a fear that they will go mental with the family paper. I really hope they will be nice to us lol I don't know how much information I can absorb!!

How tf are you supposed to write enough on personal life its so tiny in the textbook

Guys how do u structure the 20 markers in unit 2? Alll of the three 20 markers, I'm so confused!!!! (old spec!)